M.A.B. Mar 21, 2012:

The N* set are just positive integers, i.e. natural numbers without zero.

rkillings Mar 21, 2012:

The traditional (pre-19thC) definition of the natural numbers was the set of positive integers. You can't easily get away with "natural integers" in English, but you could preserve both words by saying, e.g., "the natural numbers, i.e. the positive integers not including zero:". Or, discard "natural" and say "positive whole numbers".

The capitals in Real-Imaginary may be there only because of the hyphen (which ought to be an en-dash) in connection with 'bascule'.

DLyons Mar 20, 2012:

The "natural numbers" (whether capitalized or not) is very much the standard Math terminology [N for 0, 1, 2, ... and N* for 1, 2, ... ]

Since the piece has no difficulty N* and with the more complex Real and Imaginary numbers, I'd be inclined stick to "natural numbers".

P.S. Note that Real and Imaginary are being capitalized.

Barbara Cochran, MFA (asker) Mar 20, 2012:

Positive Numbers? Thanks for your help, everyone.

Since I entered the question, I was able to find some information about the term.

Due to the somewhat informal nature of this piece, do you think "positive numbers" would be more appropriate?